Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez is again seeking a position as a county executive – this time in her home state of New Mexico – and once again controversies about transparency and politicking are dogging her bid.

One local Albuquerque television station last week called the selection process in New Mexico’s biggest county, Bernalillo County, “a rocky road.”

Chavez, who twice lost bids for Mayor of San Jose, saw her finalist standing for San Diego County chief administrative officer derailed after a sexual harassment scandal and bickering among supervisors, a very public attempt by organized labor to influence the proceedings and threats by Chavez of a discrimination lawsuit.

The New Mexico Department of Justice last week accused the Bernalillo County Commission of violating state law in its search for the next county manager, and declared the search process by the state’s largest county “null and void,” until commissioners fixed the problem.

As the county commission introduced and interviewed its three finalists – including Chavez, a current Bernalillo County department head and a former Oregon city manager – two commissioners asked the state to investigate their colleagues, alleging violation of New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act.

Faced with a state justice department ultimatum to either hold a new public meeting to summarize their previous private communications, or start the process from scratch, the commissioners held a special meeting in Albuquerque Tuesday to take a public vote naming the finalists, allowing the selection process to move forward.

The state investigation was initiated after Commissioners Steven Quezada, a Democrat, and Walt Benson, a Republican, accused three colleagues, Barbara Baca, Adriann Barboa, and Eric Olivas, all Democrats, of discussing the finalists and hiring plan before last week’s commission meeting.

The state investigation found that the commissioners had engaged in a “rolling quorum” around a resolution that outlined the hiring process for a new Bernalillo County manager. A rolling quorum is when the majority of a public body confers on public business over phone or email outside of a public meeting.

The Albuquerque Journal reported that the private communications on public business included text messages and phone calls between commissioners about the county manager hiring process, and “reply-all” emails on county business that included all of the commissioners.

“These communications taken together constituted multiple rolling quorums prompting our letter requiring corrective action, which the commission took today,” a state official told the Albuquerque Journal Tuesday..

Commissioners Benson and Quezada voted against the motion to restart the process.

“This afternoon’s vote signals to the public that not all of their voices are relevant or equal when it comes to highly important county decisions,” the two commissioners said in a joint statement to Albuquerque media. “While the county chair may call today’s vote ‘a cure’ to their deliberately deceitful practices, it is anything but. It cannot cure the fact that the search for a new county manager proceeded without input from the full commission.”

On Tuesday, Baca apologized to the public, county staff, search committee volunteers and county manager applicants, and said the commission is going to change how it handles ‘reply-all’ emails in the future.

The Bernalillo County commissioners expect to make a decision by the end of the month.

In last week’s public question-and-answer session, the Albuquerque reported that Chavez touted her work with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, claiming that as a board member she helped secure $30 million to attract green technology companies.

She also was asked about her threat to sue San Diego County for rejecting her application for the top administrative post.

“One member of the board, in conversations with others, was discussing my ethnicity,” she was quoted as telling the commissioners. “I’m Mexican-American, Chavez is my name, and using that as a reason not to hire me…when that kind of thing happened, I felt really obligated to weigh in because that shouldn’t happen to anybody.”

San Diego supervisors unanimously selected a career county department head, an African-American woman with strong local ties, as its new chief administrative officer. As of today, no Chavez lawsuit had been filed.

The salary for the Bernalillo County post would be about half the $425,000 annual salary paid to the top San Diego County manager. But median housing in New Mexico is less than half of California’s median prices, and the sales tax rate outside the City of Albuquerque is less than 5%.

Chavez was born in New Mexico and grew up in the East Bay.